


The Wanderings of Oisin

by Inaccessible Rail (strangetales)



Series: The K.J. Poetry Series [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Introspective Nonsense, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 14:46:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7688521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetales/pseuds/Inaccessible%20Rail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killian Jones loves poetry and Emma Swan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wanderings of Oisin

**Author's Note:**

> I should absolutely be finishing “The Pirate and The Oyster Shell” and not writing fic about Killian Jones and poetry. I know, very stupid. But I just think that he’d be a poem kinda guy and I like imagining his discovery of literature and poetry and being absolutely gone for it. “The Wanderings of Oisin” is an epic poem by W.B. Yeats. “Oisin” is pronounced, “oh-sheen.”

For all the apparent downsides of living in a “land without magic,” for all the complaining he had endured at the behest of many a Storybrooke resident, Killian Jones could only silently disagree with the miserable masses. And it wasn’t as if he never felt the occasional longing for a quiet, empty stretch of field, the silence that comes with no electricity or television; even the memory of certain pieces of clothing buzzed pleasantly in his mind. But truthfully, even without the potions and the fairies and the instant gratification of fancy spell work, Killian could not help but forgive this land when he happened upon its poetry. 

When he considered all the realms in which he had lived and traveled, he felt confident in the belief that there had never been one lick of good writing to be found (Belle would argue this point, but they had agreed to disagree long ago). Novels and short stories, the occasional bawdy ballad, maybe, but poetry; real poetry? Stumbling upon prose such as that had always been few and far between. On the rare occasion that he did find an acceptable piece, he was always struck with the strange feeling that the parchment he held in his hands wasn't quite where it was supposed to be. With the apparent frequency of portals opening between worlds, it wasn't all that surprising to imagine that the occasional slip of paper might pass through.  
   
His first encounter comes in a fragmented form; an untitled work as far as he can tell, but he’s fairly certain the author’s name is printed in the top right corner. “W.B. Yeats,” he mouthed silently to himself as he lay in his hammock aboard the Jewel. _Is it pronounced “Yates" or “Yeets?"_ He turns the phrasing over and over again in his mind and on his tongue, and it would still be another couple hundred years until a young boy named Henry would laugh over his homework one night and assure him that it’s pronounced “Yates."  
   
“I always thought so,” he mumbled good-naturedly, leaving the lad to finish his homework before his mother returned home in a caffeinated tizzy.  
   
**“You who are bent, and bald, and blind,**  
**With a heavy heart and a wandering mind,**  
**Have known three centuries, poets sing,**  
**Of dalliance with a demon thing."**  
   
When he was young, shortly before Liam’s death, he read those words and he pitied the “bent,” the “bald,” and the “blind.” He stopped to consider the heaviness of his own heart, and he wasn’t certain he could relate, if he should relate, or if it mattered that he relate at all. Does the ability to relate matter a whit to the pain therein? _No_ , he thought decidedly, _no less real_. And for a while it was just a distant thing, an unknowable feeling in his head. Until Liam was lost, until he himself was lost, until he found Milah and lost her too, and until he himself had lived three whole centuries, his very own demon nipping at his heels. He knew too well, and how did this fellow (Yates? Yeets?) know? How could _he_ read his heart so well when he could barely decipher his own?  
   
It had been stamped on an aged piece of parchment, wrinkled and muddled from its brief excursion on the open sea before he had scooped it up. Thanks to the damage, some of it had been illegible, but when it continued he read:  
   
**“And found on the dove-grey edge of the sea**  
**A pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rode**  
**On a horse with bridle of findrinny;**  
**And like a sunset were her lips,**  
**A stormy sunset on doomed ships;**  
**A citron colour groomed in her hair,”**  
   
“What the hell does that mean?”  
   
“What, my love?” he replied softly, his lips pressed against the cold shell of Milah’s ear (at sea in midwinter and the stubborn woman refused to be bothered with silly things like _hats_ and _gloves_ ). He couldn’t help but be charmed by her frustration with the admittedly maddening word (he could never quite decipher it either, thanks be to the Royal Navy).  
   
“What is ‘findrinny?’”  
   
“In all honesty, love, I haven’t the faintest idea. I’ve stared at that parchment for years and I’ve yet to have an inkling.”  
   
He could practically hear the delightful wrinkling of her nose alongside the soft groan of frustration that escaped between her lips. “Sounds dirty.”  
   
He had chuckled loudly against her hair and gently plucked the parchment from her hands, her laughter following his hand as he dangled the paper teasingly out of reach, “I think we can manage that.”  
 

...

   
“It’s a kind of bronze.”  
   
“Excuse me?”  
   
He hadn’t thought she’d been paying attention, his Swan, all wrapped up in some superfluous report about some kind of property squabble.  
   
Her gaze remained cast pointedly downwards, her pen moving without pause, “Findrinny,” he could hear some slight sniffling in her voice leftover from the cold she had miserably (and loudly) suffered through the week before, “it’s a kind of decoration you might find on a piece of armor.”  
   
Later that night he’ll lie in bed only slightly embarrassed by the dumbstruck look on his face, but it has literally been over _three hundred years_ , and he had _never_ been able to figure out that blasted, bloody word. The pride seeps into his voice like so many times before, lacing the lovely letters of her name, “Swan.”  
   
She finally relents in her scribbling and sighs exasperatedly, “What?”  
   
“You never cease to amaze.”  
   
“Relax.”  
   
He practically _skips_ over to her chair; for once, those infuriating wheels attached to the bottom working in his favor as he spins her around and slides her away from the desk towards his waiting arms. His hand and hook rest on either side of her stiff form, effectively trapping her, arms folding themselves defensively across her chest.  
   
“How in the _world_ do you know that, Swan?”  
   
“Don’t act so surprised, _Hook_ , I read,” she moans and drops her arms at the look of seeming disbelief on his face, “and you can drop the eyebrow.”  
   
He supposes that he shouldn’t be all that surprised, that in all the years he had dug that poem out of trunks and pockets and desk drawers and re-read the words that he had already memorized long ago, that the person responsible for cracking the code would be Emma Swan.  
   
“Come now, don’t be shy, darling.”  
   
She appears to start fidgeting and he can’t help but become mildly concerned when she reaches up to tuck loose hair behind her ear, a “citron” color, if he had to name it.  
   
“I don’t know what prison is like in fairytale land,” despite the fact that Emma has known the actual name of her parent’s homeland for sometime, there still seems to remain a part of her that can’t quite name it, and she continues, “but in my world they want us to try and make something of ourselves in there.”  
   
He straightens and goes to grab her hand before it can twist itself around locks of her hair again, and she relents, “I had access to the library,” he swipes his thumb across her knuckles, “I read a lot.”  
   
“You _never_ cease to amaze,” he repeats, planting a kiss to her forehead, he can’t keep from smiling at her shyness. “Never be ashamed of what you’ve done or where you come from.”  
   
She finally meets his gaze and the blush in her cheeks makes him fall in love with her even more, _impossibly_. “I’m a fan of every part of you.”  
   
He watches her smile grow with the memory of earlier days, and with no warning he feels himself being tugged towards her, their lips meeting sloppily as the chair knocks their knees almost painfully together with the quickness of her movement. “I hate this bloody chair, Swan.”  
   
He can hear the sweet notes of her laughter and relishes the feeling of her forehead knocking sweetly against his own.  
   
“I know.”  
 

…

   
 **“But down to her feet white vesture flowed,**  
 **And with the glimmering crimson glowed**  
 **Of many a figured embroidery;**  
 **And it was bound with a pearl-pale shell**  
 **That wavered like the summer streams,**  
 **As her soft bosom rose and fell.”**  
   
Regardless of what Belle may argue in the library late at night, vehemently defending the literary canon of Misthaven and beyond into the ridiculously wee hours of the morning, Killian Jones knows without any doubt in his mind (and Gods, does he _doubt_ ), there is not one line of prose from their land that can fully encapsulate his feelings for Emma Swan.  
   
He doesn’t care that he’s lacking the full story. That he has maybe 2 or 3 stanzas of a poem that exists in the form of _3 books_. Henry reminds him that he’s missing _context_ , he’s missing the rest of the story, the life of W.B. Yeats, the time period in which it was written, how it came to be in the world at precisely that time and why, and how maybe it’s not his “best work,” and Killian doesn’t give a damn. Because he has known those words for longer than he ever thought he would be _alive_ and for all of that nonsense, those words are lined along the walls of his heart, and he thinks that maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the _lack_ of magic. It has to do with faith and belief and the knowledge that there are some things we simply _must_ believe because there is no way to know for sure. And this man, these men and women, they had to write about it.  
   
Magic makes the impossible possible, and certainly, in its own way, it is important. It’s a part of Emma, after all, it fuels the town in which they live, it allows them to defeat evil and find love and practically face all of the many trials they’ve faced together, but despite all of that magic, and all that proof, his happiness with Emma has never been a sure thing. It was hard and exhausting, and he actually died, _more than once_ , and even after he had been witness to the depth of their love for each other, he almost lost her.  
   
“Do you think you’ll read the rest?”  
   
They’re lying on the deck of his ship after a particularly trying day. Henry late to school, car won’t start, vague, threatening messages left at their door, young Neal is sick and her parents are at maximum capacity for fretting, and they just needed to make a moment for themselves. It’s begun to get colder, but he’s wrapped them in a thick quilt, and according to her, he generates enough heat for the both of them.  
   
“Read the rest of what, love?”  
   
She laughs, “ _The Wanderings of Oisin_? That poem you’ve been carrying around in your pocket for a couple hundred years?”  
   
“Oh,” he exclaims, slightly taken aback, “I suppose so. I hadn’t really thought much about it, to be honest.”  
   
“Don’t you want to know how it ends?”  
   
She would probably tell him that it’s impossible, that there’s no way he could feel her heart beating inside of his chest, but in that moment he does. He can feel it beat inside of his skin and its rhythm is not unlike the sound of the water against his ship at that very moment, a comforting lull that has rocked him to sleep since he was a boy.

“I’m not sure,” he answers, gathering her cold hands between his warm ones, “I’ve only had these pieces for so long, I’m not sure I want to know.”

“I get that.”

And he finds it incredible, that in only 3 stanzas of a 3-book poem, he can see his life written out before his very eyes. And he’s not sure he wants to insert more words in between and muddle up this mess anymore than it already is, he’s not certain he could stand to imagine his life in any other way. His heart had been heavy, his mind untethered, the demons, _unrelenting_. He’s found his high-born lady and while his journey has not ended, he’s not sure his heart could take anymore prodding at the hands of this world’s vicious authorship.

“We’ll find you another one,” she presses a soft kiss to his hands and he swears he feels her heart again.

**Author's Note:**

> I may turn this into a series of little ficlets using different poems. Have not decided yet. Be sure to let me know if there’s interest in such a thing! I'm on [Tumblr](http://starlessness.tumblr.com), too!


End file.
